Lets Come Home

The Dallas Morning News reported yesterday that the Commander of the North American Armed Forces is faced with a troubling task. According to this report, this Commander is to determine whether the terroristic threat from the air in these United States warrants continuation of our current level of nation-wide air support. Apparently, since the attacks of 9/11 our armed services have either patrolled our air space or been on stand-by to intercept possible unknown threats. If memory serves, I believe that last year there were 1400 unknown aircraft that warranted going on alert. Of those, 400 required us to be concerned and on 200 occasions we actually launched F18 Fighters to intercept and identify the possible threat.

It should come as no surprise that launching an F18 or keeping a force on call to intercept known threats is an expensive endeavor. To that regard, the Commander is basically being asked to reassess and trim the budget. Is there anyone else out there that finds this a bit odd? Ok, how but insane? The cost of the war in Iraq/Afghanistan is rapidly approaching 1 trillion dollars. Yes, that’s with a T. Our war is costing the U.S. taxpayer around 65 million dollars a day. On average, it costs about 390,000 dollars to deploy ONE soldier. And we’re worried about the budget to patrol our own air space?

Please. I completely understand the battle plan that states it’s better to take the fight to the enemy than for them to take it to us. But here’s my battle plan. If I’m at war, I would much rather hunker down in my own house with food and ammo and a really big fence, and DEFEND my turf than I would roam the streets waiting for the enemy to jump out. Game over. I think maybe it’s time we did the same.

I’ve said before I was the first on the bandwagon that called for Hussein’s head. I was all for going over to Iraq and righting a serious wrong. But let’s face it. It’s time to come home. This is a war we cannot win. We CAN continue to somewhat suppress acts of terrorism by maintaining a presence in the Middle East, but it will never, ever stop. This war has been going on for centuries already. Radical Islamics practice Jihad, from the word Jahada, which means “to strive for” and implies a struggle to overcome some force of adversity. In a nutshell, these radicals believe you should convert or die. AND…they are more than willing to die for that cause. It’s hard to defeat an enemy that isn’t afraid to die.

If I can figure out we can’t “win” an outright war on terror in the Middle East, don’t you think the Commander of the Joint Chiefs knows it? Hell yes he knows. So the conspiracy theorist in me screams that we’re there for another reason, be it oil or huge government defense contracts. If we’re truly serious about ending that fight once and for all, we drop glass cutters in the sand attached to a note. We give our troops a couple days to withdraw, and we turn the Middle East into a giant plate-glass window. I know that’s gross oversimplification, but we’re just dicking around over there and our men and women are dying for it each and every day. Defending our freedom? Sure they are, because they’re under orders. How about we order them home? Let’s spend that 65 million dollars a day patrolling our own shores, watching our own air space, hiring some more CIA spies, etc. etc. etc. I’ll bet we can easily do a better job defending our country against terrorism for a lot less money, by hunkering down right here at home.

Enough is enough. Let’s bring them home.